Bill Clinton to surprise U.N. conference
...that he doesn't sidle up behind it and goose it on the butt.
Then again, knowing U.N. conferences, it would probably enjoy it.
[Editorial note: I had to change the link to the story because the AP/Yahoo!News feed seems to have been edited to have a new headline: "Clinton says Bush is 'flat wrong' on Kyoto." I find it interesting that Mr. Clinton would say that, given the details found in this USATODAY story from 2001: Ex-Clinton aides admit Kyoto treaty flawed
06/11/2001 - Updated 08:46 PM ET
By Jonathan Weisman, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — As President Bush headed off Monday to face environmental critics in Europe, he fired a parting shot at the global warming treaty he has rejected. He called the Kyoto Protocol unrealistic, costly and "fatally flawed."
In that assessment, he has some unexpected supporters: Clinton administration experts.
Economists from the Clinton White House now concede that complying with Kyoto's mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases would be difficult — and more expensive to American consumers than they thought when they were in charge.
That reassessment helped fuel Bush's decision to reject the Kyoto treaty, said Lawrence Lindsey, the president's economic adviser. Instead of embracing binding limits on greenhouse gases, Bush pledged on Monday a modest package of actions to combat global warming. They include a research initiative to fill gaps in scientists' understanding of climate change and increased use of renewable energy. But he didn't call for new money. [...]
The treaty, negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, aimed to combat emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that most scientists believe trap heat in the atmosphere. The treaty required the United States to reduce its emissions by 2012 to 7% below its 1990 levels.
At the time, the Clinton White House estimated that the cost of reaching that target was relatively low: about $7 billion to $12 billion a year starting in 2008, when binding reductions would begin phasing in. An average household's energy bills would rise $70-$110 a year, and gasoline prices would inch up no more than 6 cents a gallon, the White House said.
Other government cost estimates were far higher. The Department of Energy estimated that gasoline prices would have to rise 66 cents a gallon — or 53% over a projected 2010 price — to meet Kyoto's emissions targets. [...]
Todd Stern, Clinton's global warming coordinator, says that the Europeans would likely go along with an unlimited trading system if the Bush administration would return to the negotiating table to produce a revised treaty it could sign. However, he concedes that China won't participate for now. [And have again decided it best if the U.S. bind itself to the treaty, but not them. Ed.]
Leaving China out of a trading scheme would double the Clinton cost estimate, says Joseph Aldy, who helped develop the estimates for Clinton. "We always thought the (emissions) targets were very ambitious," he says. "But the thing that made us really uneasy about our analysis ... was that if our assumptions didn't come true, you could come out with costs that were much, much higher." [...]
By simply walking away from it, he is letting the Europeans portray the United States as the villain, even though they privately admit that they, too, may be unable to comply with the treaty. "George Bush has done all the work for the Europeans," says Robert Lawrence, a Clinton administration economist now at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Lindsey, however, insists that the Kyoto Protocol is beyond repair. "The models are not even close in suggesting Kyoto was the right approach," he says. "It was wrong. I think we did the right thing."